The Boogeyman
by dryskim
Summary: His name is Frank Castle. He's been cleaning the streets of filth for close to fifty years. And today is no different. Told from the first-person perspective of one unlucky individual who found himself on the wrong side of Frank's M16.


It only takes four simple words to spur a mafia operation into full swing. Four simple words to get the dons and bosses squirming and tripping all over themselves while spontaneously shitting their collective pants.

Frank Castle is back.

Frank Castle, a sixty-something fossil of the Vietnam War. A crustacean of war and destruction who lost his entire family in a bloodbath of senseless violence, and once he started killing, sweet Christ, the old fucker never quit.

He'd blast his way through an entire operation, dismantle the whole fucking place with nothing but his bare hands and an M16. He'd kill every poor fucker who got in his way, leave them in a pool of their own guts to drown in and then disappear just as quickly.

Frank Castle was the fucking bogeyman of New York, the specter that hung over every unsavory shoulder in the whole goddamn place. Nobody was safe, you could be as lowly as a kid fucking molester and find yourself facing down that skull-wearing nutjob just as likely as the most powerful crime boss.

And then, one day, the killing just sort of...ceased.

Some said old Frank died of a heart attack, that he'd been blazing away with a pair of Uzi's chasing down a pair of street punks when he'd just face planted on the sidewalk. That they'd emptied close to three hundred rounds into him, and then had his bullet-riddled corpse hauled down to the butcher and made into steaks. Apparently, Frank Castle's ancient blood-spilling old ass tasted fantastic with wine.

Most people declared that tall tale was nothing more than fucking bullshit, and left it at that. Though the idea of people chopping up and eating old Franky was still held in regard in some circles, that if you ate a bit of Frank 'The Goddamn Punisher' Castle's leathery flesh that somehow some of his nigh unkillable nature would rub off on you. Turn you into a motherfucking Rambo because you ate some old ass bastard's twig and berries.

Only a few people actually bought that story, or spread it around, most of them drugged up fucks who'd eat their own mothers if they were sufficiently fucked up.

The other possibility that old Frank just finally killed himself out, that he'd blasted and burned and mutilated enough poor fucks that killing just wasn't fun anymore. That maybe Frank retired to collect stamps or some shit, that he was down at the local VFW telling stories about his time in 'Nam.

For some reason, the idea of good old Frank just dying of natural causes never came up in any circles. Because after you've spent the last forty-or-so years pissing the bed in terror, you can't wrap your head sensibly around the idea that the fuck who's been chasing you just up and croaked. Normal people die, grandma and grandpa die in their sleep, Frank fucking Castle?

That motherfucker just pauses to reload before he fucks your shit twelve ways to Sunday without any fucking remorse. Because he's Frank Castle and that's just how he fucking operates.

So yeah, when word hits the streets that old Frank's back in town, shit gets real real quick. Immaculate white suits are promptly turned brown when all the crime bosses realize their shit could be the one to get fucked. You've got guys literally uprooting their entire goddamn operation and moving it out of state just because the bullshit on the street says some asshole from the Jurassic Period might be pissed off and in town.

Me? I don't fucking know, I just do what I'm told and shoot what I'm told to shoot. So if the big cheese wants to get everybody off the street and back to protect his extravagant fucking villa, then I ain't fucking complaining. Sometimes you get tired of roughing up shitheads who can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that when they stop paying - we always fucking find them. And every time you bust down the door, they've always got that same goddamn shocked expression on their faces, like they're not expecting us to be fucking smart enough to put two and two together and realize they've skipped town to avoid paying.

Because they never realize that once we take the pick of their daughters, maybe their wives if they've still got some mileage on them, that this is what they were paying to avoid. I don't wake up every morning all stoked to kick down some fuck's door, drag his wife and daughters out by their hair and then sell them to some fucked up Eastern European motherfucker with more venereal diseases than Hefner. I don't get my rocks off sending fourteen year old girls off with guys four times their age, but I'm not one to snub my nose at the dirty work, it's grimy shit that needs to be done and I'm good enough at it to see continued employment.

But enough about that shit, the point is, compared to doing that shit all day, just wandering the grounds keeping an eye out for an old motherfucker in a shirt with a skull on it is a fucking cushy job. Sure, the bullshit will siphon through and the boss will realize the return of old Franky's nothing more than the usual shit and things'll go back to normal.

So when I show up and the first time I see is one of the older guys breaking open crates of AKs, I know something's up. The boss doesn't break out the AKs unless shit is beyond fucked up and we've got assholes creeping in our turf, even then, only the older guys get to pack them. So when I see whole shipping crates being pried open and rifles being handed out to every set of hands in reach, I know that something's going down today.

They shove an AK in my hands, tell me to head down the line and pick up my two magazines. So I've got a gun from back in the time of Soviet Russia, dinosaurs, and JFK in my hands and the realization starts to sink in. That little voice in the back of my head starts screaming as I rock a magazine into the gun and give the charging handle a good solid yank.

Motherfucker, we're gearing up for when old Franky-boy's gonna come knocking.

And once that hits me in the gut like a four-hundred pound black woman with a pissed off disposition, I realize just how fucked this whole situation is. And suddenly I'm on fucking edge, this isn't some goddamn bullshit ghost story anymore, this is goddamn reality and my ass is the one about to get fucked raw by a man with razor blades for a dick.

I've got two clips for my AK, the one I got loaded in the gun, and the one I've got tucked in my pants. Two banana mags, thirty rounds each, sixty bullets to fuck this guy and I'm getting the feeling they aren't gonna be enough. I mean, fuck, Victor Charlie back in Vietnam had guns like these and four whole fucking years to kill this motherfucker - a thousand other crews, have had their own shots at this motherfucker over the last forty goddamn years, and he hasn't died yet - what the fuck are we expecting to do?

It's a little after dark when the guys out front start shooting at something. It's dark enough that Franky can prowl around without too much trouble, while with the estate lit up like a fucking Christmas tree the guys out front are easy little silhouettes for him to pick off.

The one thing I start to realize is, I can't fucking hear when Franky takes a shot over the sounds of our own guys just laying on the triggers and mowing down the shrubbery. Eventually the sounds of the AKs starts to die out - probably when the poor bastards outside burn through the last of their ammo, that's when Frank starts shooting.

It's just a series of pops rather than the low rattling associated with our AKs, so he's probably packing an M16, it's just single shots rather than a long drawn out burst of full automatic. He'll shoot, somebody will take a round and drop to the patio either missing a chunk of their forehead or screaming bloody murder because Frank only managed to mortally wound them. Some of the others take more than one shot to put down, taking a series of three or four bullets into the chest before flopping back. The last guy does his little dance of death as the bullets tear holes through his chest with little puffs of red - and then the only sound left is the sounds of those last few guys who are whimpering in the dark.

Now, the rest of us inside, by this point we've already pissed ourselves and our pants are so heavy from shitting ourselves we don't know what the fuck to do with ourselves. Finally somebody finds his fucking brain or we'd have all been massacred in the living room, so they start ushering us back. The plan is if we stop Castle with more or less a wall of men and guns, he'll be unable to get to the boss and hopefully one of us will get lucky and send this so-called Punisher straight to hell.

So we arrange ourselves, get ready, and fucking wait.

Goddamn, the fucking waiting. I've got an AK-47 that probably saw use by Osama Bin Laden, and Frank decides to be cheeky and take his goddamn time. Hell, maybe he didn't, maybe time just fucking slowed down like we were in the goddamn Matrix. Either way, waiting on Castle to continue his assault probably aged me ten fucking years.

Except Castle doesn't bust in, no-no-no, that old motherfucker's sitting just outside the windows taking his damn good time lining up a shot. The guy to my right, he's the one who eats the first bullet, the whole side of his face exploding - his brains splatter my face. Chunks of his grey matter, cerberus fluid - whatever the fuck that stuff is, it's all running down the side of my face as everybody shifts to light up where we all think Frank's at. Since we're all just clustered together like some fucked up version of the British Army from the Revolution, Frank's got an easy bunch of kills. If he'd just walked in the front door like we hoped, we'd have fucked him up just due to numbers, but instead we wound up blindly firing into the darkness blasting everything but Frank while he just keeps plugging away at us from wherever he's hiding out.

I get lucky - and by lucky, I mean I wind up taking a bullet through the forearm followed up a round through the chest. My forearm's fucking shattered or whatever and I can't breath without my lungs burning like I've inhaled pepper spray. I'm down on the floor, on my hands and knees, crawling for my survival when Frank decides that picking us off with his M16 just isn't doing the job fast enough. So good old Frank breaks out his fucking grenade launcher and launches a round into the hallway, I just happen to be glancing over my shoulder like a fucktard when it happens. There were probably ten guys, and with the drop of a hat they're nothing but gory chunks splattering the walls. I'm in the next room, and I'm getting hit with pieces of shredded human flesh, bits of bone, and the occasional mangled limb.

I roll over onto my back, and that's when I see Frank, making his way through the pile of meat that used to be my associates. The first thing that gets me is - goddamn - for a dude in his mid sixties, Castle is one of those motherfuckers who seemingly never ages. I mean, shit, he looks like an old, scarred up asshole - but he's still old enough to be my goddamn father and he's kicking more ass than men a quarter his age. Blowing us all up? Underhanded, not something Stallone would do, but it's not like Castle has the option of asking for a reshoot when he fucks himself up fighting Steve Austin.

I won't lie, if we had Castle down, dead to rights, I'd have caved his fucking face in with my boot.

So I've got Frank fucking Castle, skull-print shirt and all standing over me and I know the show's over. He's just staring down at me, doing one of those Clint Eastwood things that always looks fucking stupid on TV but when you're facing down one in real life you realize how fucked that stare means you are.

I realize this is it, y'know? I either grab a gun and blow my brains out or let Castle torture me to death for the next half hour, two guesses what I do, and the first one don't count. So obviously I go for the closest gun, I'm not one of those defiant to the end types, I've got nothing to gain from it. I don't even get anywhere near grabbing that pistol before I've got Castle's boot stomping down on my one good arm, snaps it like a fucking twig.

He kicks the gun out of my reach and leaves to continue his one-man rampage, knowing I'm not going anywhere fast with two mangled arms and a bullet through the chest and that's it. That's my grand encounter with the infamous Punisher. I swear to Christ, the whole fucking thing's true.

Shame is, sitting here with my arms in casts - doctors, nurses, all them medical school types looking over me, journalists coming by to try to get an idea of what happened that night - and nobody fucking believes me.

Fuck, they're just like I used to be. Can't fucking believe in the bogeyman until he's standing right in front of your eyes.


End file.
